What is the highest voltage?

[Mark R]

What is the highest voltage ever recorded/detected?

Is there a limit to the potential that may be reached, given a well insulated (e.g. deep space) object?

 

[CTho9305]

Voltage is relative...

 

[BrownTown]

The highest voltage transmission line is 1100kV, althought i'm sure you can get higher voltages easily enough.

 

[MadAmos]

I work at a/the PG&E nuclear power plant and our main transformer output is 500KV three phase from each of the 1100MW units.

Amos

 

[cheesehead]

Originally posted by: MadAmos
I work at a/the PG&E nuclear power plant and our main transformer output is 500KV three phase from each of the 1100MW units.

Amos

I seem to recall a simulated lightning thingamajig that was at least a few million volts - I'm not sure.

EDIT:

Fermilab had a confirmed 1.5+ trillion volts in 1985 - sort of. Technically, an electron-volt is a measure of energy, not of potential.

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_v128/ai_3952277

Lightning is roughly 120MV, but it's at a very, very high current.
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/1998/MathieuLo.shtml

 

[MrDudeMan]

Originally posted by: CTho9305
Voltage is relative...

even so the maximum voltage produced could still be recorded...he is asking the biggest voltage with respect to anything.

 

[BrownTown]

There is a theoretical maximum right, like if you were able to have a bag of pure electrons in one place and a bag of pure protons in another?

 

[MrPickins]

http://www.bioedonline.org/news/news-print.cfm?art=1509

But ultra-high-energy cosmic rays are at least a thousand times more energetic still, and extremely rare. Only one particle is expected to hit each square kilometre of Earth every century.

Physicists already know that these particles are almost certainly protons whose energies are measured in exaelectronvolts (1018 eV) - the amount of energy that an electron acquires when it is accelerated by a billion billion volts. Each proton has a kinetic energy similar to that of a flying golfball, and travels at just one part in 1022 slower than the speed of light.

Glennys Farrar, a particle physicist from New York University, has now shown that five of these particles all came to Earth from a pair of galactic clusters that are crashing together roughly 450 million light years away.

I think that's the highest figure I've ever heard for voltage.
I can't vouch for it's accuracy, though.

 

[CTho9305]

Originally posted by: MrPickins
http://www.bioedonline.org/news/news-print.cfm?art=1509

But ultra-high-energy cosmic rays are at least a thousand times more energetic still, and extremely rare. Only one particle is expected to hit each square kilometre of Earth every century.

Physicists already know that these particles are almost certainly protons whose energies are measured in exaelectronvolts (1018 eV) - the amount of energy that an electron acquires when it is accelerated by a billion billion volts. Each proton has a kinetic energy similar to that of a flying golfball, and travels at just one part in 1022 slower than the speed of light.

Glennys Farrar, a particle physicist from New York University, has now shown that five of these particles all came to Earth from a pair of galactic clusters that are crashing together roughly 450 million light years away.

I think that's the highest figure I've ever heard for voltage.
I can't vouch for it's accuracy, though.

I thought that in particle accelerators, you don't actually create a billion volt difference to accelerate the electrons - you use many passes through a much lower voltage field. Also, it seems to me that in a galaxy-collision situation, most of the energy of stuff flying out would come kinetic energy rather than acceleration through electric fields.

 

[MrPickins]

Originally posted by: CTho9305

Originally posted by: MrPickins
http://www.bioedonline.org/news/news-print.cfm?art=1509

But ultra-high-energy cosmic rays are at least a thousand times more energetic still, and extremely rare. Only one particle is expected to hit each square kilometre of Earth every century.

Physicists already know that these particles are almost certainly protons whose energies are measured in exaelectronvolts (1018 eV) - the amount of energy that an electron acquires when it is accelerated by a billion billion volts. Each proton has a kinetic energy similar to that of a flying golfball, and travels at just one part in 1022 slower than the speed of light.

Glennys Farrar, a particle physicist from New York University, has now shown that five of these particles all came to Earth from a pair of galactic clusters that are crashing together roughly 450 million light years away.

I think that's the highest figure I've ever heard for voltage.
I can't vouch for it's accuracy, though.

I thought that in particle accelerators, you don't actually create a billion volt difference to accelerate the electrons - you use many passes through a much lower voltage field. Also, it seems to me that in a galaxy-collision situation, most of the energy of stuff flying out would come kinetic energy rather than acceleration through electric fields.

I'm no astrophysicist, but I think it takes something like a black hole to accelerate matter to relativistic speeds through gravity alone.

They explain it this way:

The clusters are extremely rich in stars and have powerful magnetic fields that become warped when they collide. It's possible that the turbulent magnetic fields accelerate charged particles such as protons in tight spirals before flinging them towards us.

In which case you would be correct about multiple passes through a smaller voltage.

I wish I could find more information... This topic is fascinating. 😀

 

[jagec]

\

Originally posted by: BrownTown
There is a theoretical maximum right, like if you were able to have a bag of pure electrons in one place and a bag of pure protons in another?

I'm not entirely sure, but I'd imagine that you can always have bigger bags, and hold them closer together
(?)

 

[bobsmith1492]

Originally posted by: jagec
\

Originally posted by: BrownTown
There is a theoretical maximum right, like if you were able to have a bag of pure electrons in one place and a bag of pure protons in another?

I'm not entirely sure, but I'd imagine that you can always have bigger bags, and hold them closer together
(?)

You mean further apart so that the electrons don't jump over to the protons? The potential between the "bags" would be the same no matter how far apart they were, I believe. However, the electric field would be stronger and the attraction between the "bags" would be stronger if they were closer together...

I'm not sure if the potential is controlled by the raw number of electrons vs. protons or the difference in the ratio of electrons/protons between the "bags"... but I'd think not the latter or else there would be an infinite potential between a single electron and an ionized hydrogen atom (single proton)...

 

[DrPizza]

kinda weird how hard it is to describe potential difference / voltage. Some of you guys probably have a better grasp of it than I do. However, here's how I explain it to high school students, using the most basic formulas: F=kqq/r^2, E=F/q, and V=W/q

To kinda get the kids thinking, I simply charge up the van de graff and grab a handful of tennis balls. "For the sake of argument, let's assume the van de graff has a negative charge on it. Each of these tennis balls represents a dozen elect errrr, a coulomb of electrons. <walking toward van de graff with tennis balls> The van de graff is repelling these tennis balls, errrr, repelling these coulombs of electrons. The closer I get, the greater the force (F equation); but I'm doing work in moving these tennis balls closer. And, you already know the Van de graff has a high voltage. Well, the higher the voltage, the more work I'd have to do to go from point A to point B. Or, if I had more or fewer tennis balls, I could also affect the amount of work I have to do in going from point A to point B. That's sort of what voltage is - the amount of work I have to do, PER coulomb of charge. Except, we go the other way. Let's suppose these tennis balls each represented a coulomb of protons. These balls would prefer to be sitting on the surface of the van de graff. Now, I have to do work in order to separate the tennis balls by a distance. The voltage is the amount of work I do, per coulomb of charge. It's sort of like potential energy - I do work in lifting an object. Once that object is raised above the ground, it has potential energy. But, voltage would be more like "potential energy per kilogram" except it's "potential energy per coulomb." (Note, I do not introduce magnetic fields, moving charges, Lorentz forces, etc. at this point)

But, perhaps this gives you a springboard to think about a "maximum" voltage... Assume some point with a charge of some number of coulombs, then calculate the potential energy 1 coulomb of electrons would have on the opposite side of the galaxy. You don't need more than one coulomb, because the voltage is "PE per coulomb".

Hopefully, someone else can add a bit... (And, if you *really* want to add, you can do a nice summation of small increments of distance times the diminishing amount of force as you travel across the galaxy with your coulomb.)

 

[jagec]

Originally posted by: bobsmith1492
You mean further apart so that the electrons don't jump over to the protons? The potential between the "bags" would be the same no matter how far apart they were, I believe. However, the electric field would be stronger and the attraction between the "bags" would be stronger if they were closer together...

I'm not sure if the potential is controlled by the raw number of electrons vs. protons or the difference in the ratio of electrons/protons between the "bags"... but I'd think not the latter or else there would be an infinite potential between a single electron and an ionized hydrogen atom (single proton)...

Err, nm, I was thinking of capacitors for some reason. Yeah, distance doesn't matter as long as you can keep your particles from suddenly becoming mobile.

Disclaimer: the following is just a thought experiment from someone who has no particular qualifications on the subject.
Actually, the ratio might be the proper way of defining it...I know it sounds paradoxical, because of your single proton-single electron example, but voltage as we know it is a bulk property, so I don't think it's necessarily contradictory. Similarly, temperature has to do with the ratio of excited states vs. ground states, so the population inversion that one encounters in a laser leads to a "paradox" of sorts as well.

So perhaps if one were to move EVERY single (free) electron from one piece of metal and put them in another, that would be the maximum possible voltage?